I recently finished reading Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond, who is a professor of geography at ULCA. In 1998 Guns, Germs and Steel won a Pulitzer Price and Aventis Price for Best Science Book and there is also a PBS / National Geographic miniseries based upon the book.
I had been meaning to read this book for several years and I finally got around to starting it about two months ago. I really enjoyed this book and I would recommend that everyone reads this books especially if you are interested in History and Anthropology.
In Gun, Germs and Steel Diamond attempts to explain why certain regions become more technology advanced and why other regions such as New Guinea never advanced beyond hunter gather societies. For example it looks at why did Europe develop the technology and will to conquer from the 15th to 19th centuries, why did Africa never develop this ability or the native civilizations in the America’s.
Historically the reason given by historians is has been racist reason in that the Europeans are superior to all other races around the world. This lead to the believe that Europeans where superior best seen in the Rudyard Kipling poem “The Whites Man’s Burden”, which laid out that is the duty of the white man to educate and watch over the lesser races.
Today these theories are not considered acceptable and raciest, so in Guns, Germs and Steel Diamond attempt to answer the question why did some regions of the world flourish and become technologically advanced and have the ability conquer much of the rest of the world.
Diamond argues in Guns, Germs and Steel that Eurasian civilization is not a product of ingenuity but of opportunity and necessity. That is that civilization is not created out of sheer will or intelligence but as a result of a chain of developments that are made possible my preconditions. The three preconditions that he outlays agriculture, geography and germs.
Diamond argues that the development of agriculture in Eurasia and the abundance of certain crops, ones that are easy to grow and highly nutritious and also more animals that could be domesticated gave Eurasia and advantaged over the rest of the world. This allowed for parts society to specialize and become black smiths for example but more than enough food can produced by other members of society to support them. This leads to technology advances that were not seen in other regions of the world, iron working for example.
This abundance of easy to grow food also allowed for high population densities which lead to disease. This results in numerous plagues that rampaged through Europe and Asia, such as the Black Death that allowed the population to grow immunity to these diseases. This results in European explorers bringing diseases with them when they landed in the America’s, these new diseases wiped out much of the native population. While there was a high population in the America’s they did not live in the densities that were seen in Eurasia nor where the domestication of animals that often results in new diseases. It is estimated that close to 95% of the native population of the America’s where wiped out by diseases brought from the “old world”.
Diamonds third point in Gun, Germs and Steel is that geography of Eurasia made it easier for population movements and trade then it was in the Americas. Claimants tend to similar along the Easy West axis, rather than the north south axis. So a plant or animal that can thrive in Asia will be able to thrive in Europe along the similar axis because of similar claimants. However the same cannot be said about Europe and Africa, or North and South America. Thus Diamond argues that since Europe and Asia are more east west then north south and thus share a similar weather crops and animals could be moved from one region to another easier. Human Migration and trade was easier also and this further gave Eurasian an advanced over the rest of the world.
That is a very short synopsis of the book, generally speaking Jared Diamonds arguments in Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies are logical and do give an reasons why Europe and Asia seems to develop more than the America’s and peoples from this region where able to dominant the world. However there are lot critics of Jared Diamond’s book.
The major attacks on the thesis of Guns, Germs and Steel: The fates of Human Societies are:
1. Diamond takes a very Eurocentric view of the world.
2. That agriculture was the primary difference for the half and half not’s in the world is too simplistic.
3. That geographic location predetermines the advancement of society.
4. The Jared Diamond is a Geography professor and thus is not qualified or trained to write on this topic that is more based on anthropology or historical.
While I do not necessarily agree with the all the premises that Jared Diamond puts forth in his books Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, I do feel that his overall argument does have some validity. Again if you are interested in History at all or anthropology Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies is must read book.
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Guns Germs and Steel is one of the flimsiest historical theories I have ever encountered and I can not understand how Jared Diamond has garnered the attention that he has. Leave it to a Physiologist/linguist to take on the job of an Anthropologist/Archeologist and get it all wrong. I believe what Jared Diamond attempts is benign justification for Western stereotypes and misconceptions about the rest of the world. He seems to believe that nobody outside of Eurasia has benefited from cultural diffusion, nor have they contributed anything of value to world history or civilization.
Ironically, Northern and Western Europeans have contributed among the least to what we could consider human civilization. For example, there is no sign of relevant civilizations ever existing in Scandinavia.
African nations have been trading with other parts of the world for millennia. Ancient Nubia had strong trade relationships with nations inside as well as outside of Africa for thousands of years and at one point even ruled over Egypt. Ethiopians were also among the first people to adopt Christianity in 4th century AD. How could this have come about if there was little contact with countries outside of Africa? Yemen is only a stone’s throw from Ethiopia; the countries are divided by the “Bab el Mandeb” (Red Sea/Gulf of Aden).
To convince one’s self that civilization and technological advancement have only come about within the parameters of that arbitrary border confining what Jared Diamond refers to as Eurasia is ridicules, especially in the face of Archeological and Anthropological evidence to the contrary. Any first year Cultural Anthropology student would know this.
In East Africa Swahili were building ships for centuries that were superior in quality to early European ships called “mtepe;” and were trading with China, Arabia and India by sea, becoming very wealthy as a result. Most of China’s ivory for some time came from direct trade with the Swahili. According to many authors including Schmidt and Avery (1978, 1979, 1986) and a review in American Anthropologist (Kusimba, 1997), Africans between 1500-2000 years ago were smelting iron at temperatures not reached in Europe until the industrial age. These Africans (in Tanzania) are believed to be among the first to produce carbon steel, using a special preheating method.
In West Africa the civilizations of Ghana, Mali, Songhai and Timbuktu attracted people from all over the world. In the early part of the fourteenth century to the time of the Moroccan invasion in the late sixteenth century, the city of Timbuktu became an important intellectual and spiritual center of the Islamic world, attracting people from as far away as Saudi Arabia to study there. Great mosques, universities, schools, and libraries were built under the Mali and Songhay Empires, some of which still stand today.
A large number of innovations that many Europeans today recognize as being uniquely their own, such as fire arms and the old trade ships once used for commerce (The kind used by Columbus for example) trace their history back to technologies and influences acquired through Islamic contacts in the Iberian Peninsula. In the year 711 AD, Islamic invaders conquered that part of Europe known today as Spain and Portugal and ruled over the region for close to 800 years (711 to 1492). Europe as a result saw a number of improvements in various areas of life and interest, ranging from the medical sciences to military; to paved roads, and street lamps. The Moor also introduced Europe to its first Universities and the numerical system currently in popular use today.
Scholars describe the Moor as originating in the Senegal River valley in Southern Mauritania as Almoravides, and then gathering followers from many ethic groups before overwhelming the Iberian Peninsula. The Almoravides were a group of devout Muslims also partially responsible for the destabilization and eventual demise of the Kingdom of Ghana — located in what is today Northern Senegal and Southern Mauritania — in and around the same time as the Iberian siege.
The spread of Islam into Africa is not mentioned in Jared Diamond’s theory, nor is the fact that the Saharan Desert is only between 5000-2000 years old, making his claims of isolation seem all the more ridiculous in from a broad perspective. Further, it has also been shown that the current inhabitants of Europe do not resemble Neolithic and Bronze Age Europeans in craniofacial form, but share close affinities with sub-Saharan Africans (Brace et al, 2006). I am curious why Jared Diamond does not incorporate these bits of historical, geographic and Anthropologic information into his makeshift post hoc hypothesis.
At the time of Columbus’s arrival in the America’s the Aztec were using math, astronomy and agriculture that was superior to Europeans. If it were not for contact with South American Amerindians (initially by accident) much of Europe would have likely died of starvation; as the continent was experiencing sever famine at the time. It was South American agriculture and crops that saved Europe from near death. Ironically, in exchange for this vitally needed learning the Europeans inadvertently killed off between 80-95% of Amerindian populations; completely wiping out many Aboriginal Caribbean native groups with new-world diseases, and then slavery.
THE REASON EUROPEANS CONQURED THE NEW WORLD IS BECAUSE THE TURKS WERE BLOCKING EUROPEAN PASSAGE TO THE SILK ROAD, AND SO THEY HAD TO FIND ANOTHER ROUT TO INDIA/CHINA. ATTEMPTING THIS BY SEA EUROPEANS EVENTUALLY DISOVERED THE AMERICAS; INADVERTLYING, THROUGH SHERE INCOMPETENCE (COLUMBUS WOULD ACTUCALLY NAME THE NATIVES AMERICANS “INDIANS”). THIS ENCOUNTER WOULD END UP WIPING OUT 80-95% OF THE NATIVE POPULATION WITH EUROPEAN BORN DISEASES. MAKING LATER CONQUEST ESPECIALLY EASY!
Africans had access to guns, too – but like the Arabs, who introduced the weapon to Europeans, initially found them inconvenient for traditional warfare. In effect, Africans also had guns germs and steal, which refutes a large part of Jared Diamond’s ridiculous theory.
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